“Warning: weekend event traffic. Expect delays.”

The first sign was posted just after the Wisconisin-Illinois border by Rockford, about 80 miles out of Chicago. Fortunately, we drove in at night to avoid the mayhem. I’ve been to enough festivals (see: Bonnaroo, 5-6-hour traffic delays) to know to plan ahead.

Even still, I’m crossing my fingers I won’t get stuck in some line somewhere past 11:45, when the first bands go on. Wouldn’t you know it, the very first acts are two I really want to see: deadboy & the Elephantmen (love their CD) and a new Austin (TX) buzz band, the Sound Team.

There are several other young Austin groups playing this weekend, too, which is no coincidence: The guys who now run Lollapalooza are the duo behind the Austin City Limits Festival, which I rank over both Coachella and Bonnaroo. Better organization. Better food (all from local eateries). Often a stronger overall lineup, although not this year. And definitely a better location.

Thanks to the success of their first event, the ACL duo took over Lolla last year and finally made it successful again. About 60,000 people showed for the reconfigured one-weekend-only event. That’s after the old package-tour concept failed to make a successful comeback in 2003 (with Jane’s Addiction headlining again, plus Audioslave, Queens of the Stone Age, etc.). It’s too bad ticket sales floundered, but have no fear, Perry Farrell is still involved this year. He’s even giving a press conference backstage later today. Last time I interviewed Perry (1995) he tried to convince me aliens were going to end at the end of that year’s Lollapalooza. I don’t think he was kidding, either.

This will be my eighth Lollapalooza. I made it to the first two tours, the last one (in Milwaukee), the best one (1994) and most of them in between. It’s hard to remember how revolutionary that first tour was: A rap act (Ice-T) playing amid a rock lineup was unheard of then, as was the hairbrained idea that 25,000 people would show up in time to see the Butthole Surfers or Rollins Band. Hopefully, this year’s show will be as unpredictable.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 4th, 2006 at 8:19 am and is filed under Lollapalooza, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.